Wednesday 11 April 2012

Highfield Lane, Compton Martin

Start: GR 544571    Finish: 535555
Height Gain: 157m      Horizontal Distance: 2.8km    
Category: 3 (on height gain but not length - given 3 as the road surface is poor).

Confucius he say; "Man who take on hill with little warm up suffers for rest of day". Well OK, Confucius pre-dated the road bike by about 3000 years. The wise words remain true...

Starting from the parish hall at Ubley may provide an excellent base and a pretty secure place to leave the car, but it's too close. There's also the little point that Ubley sits on a hill below the A368 so you get 50m of climbing straight out of the village. I suggest you start from somewhere else - either take the hill as part of a longer run or start from the car park at the bottom of Burrington Combe to give a run in. But what of the route itself..?



You start as you pass Compton Martin Post Office, pedalling east on the A368. The section along the A road is easy, a bit of a bank to get you in the mood round a sweeping left-hander (don't be tempted to take the right turn here, it's one too soon and a dead end). Taking the second right you'll immediately notice the broken road surface - get used to it, it only gets worse - and that the hill proper has started. The first 800m averages 1 in 8.5 (12%) with the bendy sections seeming a bit more than that. This part of the  road is also especially poor so I kept needing to change which of the two strips of cleanish tarmac I was using - this is OK as the middle is only mossy, not grassed! One or two of the bends also respond to an active choice to dodge some of the steeper inside banks.
Once the road finds the little valley in the side of the hill it falls back a bit, the next 500m is only 1 in 13.5 (7.3%), but it still felt tough to me after the steeper lower section, Ubley village and no sensible warm up. I rather think it might have felt fairly tough anyway. This continues up to a straightening of the road and the end of the hard part. The hill continues for about a further kilometre but it's easy cruising now, up but it hardly counts.


Rating: Tough but OK. The body of the hill is only just over a km long so definitely not worth a specific trip to do, but reasonable to include as a hard challenge in a longer route. I wouldn't recommend a descent of this, too steep for the channels of tarmac available. Given the proximity of the B road route up Harptree Hill, which takes on a very similar challenge, I suspect that Highfield Lane will see little traffic apart from hill collectors. Look out for the Harptree Hill description when I do that one.

DP

Thursday 5 April 2012

Climb Categories

Firstly - thanks to Phil Price for the first set of information on how to categorise climbs - see link to his blog below.
http://www.triathlonphil.com/category-climbs-in-cycling-explained/

I haven't made any attempt up till now to categorise the climbs on the list  - it hadn't occurred to me that they might count in those terms. It would appear they do though so, from now on, I'll be having a go at categorising them as I do them. For what it's worth, using Phil Price's rules, I offer the following categories for the routes I've done so far...

Category 5
Winscombe Hill
Brockley Combe
A38 over Shute Shelve

Category 4
A38 Cowslip Green to Bristol Airport
Bleadon Hill from Bleadon Post Office
Bleadon Hill from Elborough 
Cheddar Gorge (it may be a 3 but I don't see it as having a sufficient average gradient and if you take the steep enough bit it isn't long enough - was given 3 in the Tour of Britain because it was placed at the end of a stage).
Shipham Road, Cheddar (tough end of 4)
Cleeve Hill Road, Cleeve
Dundry Lane, Winford to Dundry
Wrington Hill (!)
From Wrington via Long Lane and Redhill to Bristol Airport Perimeter Road (Cat 3 on height gain and surface  although the average angle is too low so given 4 over all).
Shipham Lane, Winscombe to Trotts Corner (though the numbers on this say cat 3 - see my comments).

Category 3
Blagdon Hill (from Rickford to Swymmer's Farm)
Cheston Combe from Backwell
Bristol Hill, Wells
Old Bristol Hill, Wells
Burrington Combe - numerically yes, but really?
Highfield Lane, Compton Martin

On the other hand, you could decide to use what are, apparently, the Tour de France criteria for grading the climbs. There still has to be allowance for where in a ride the climb comes, but the rules are as follows: -
Category 1: Anything between an 8km hill @ 8% and a 20km hill at 5%
Category 2: 5km at 8% to 15km at 4%
Category 3: 1km @ 10% to 6km @ 5%
Category 4: 2km @ 5% to 5km @ 2% - this fits neatly with my rule of not allowing any hill with less than 100m of climbing into the 'list'.

Using these Tour de France criteria, the categories would be as follows...

Category 3
Cheston Combe, Backwell
Bleadon Hill from Elborough
Blagdon (Two Trees)
Highfield Lane, Compton Martin
Harptree Hill, Compton Martin
Smitham Hill, East Harptree
Bristol Hill, Wells
Ebbor Lane and Deerleap, Easton
Stancombe Lane, Westbury-sub-Mendip
Westfield Lane, Rodney Stoke
West Mendip Way, Draycott
Old Bristol Road, Wells
Cheddar Gorge
Shipham Road, Cheddar
Cleeve Hill Road, Cleeve
Wrington Hill
Limeburn Hill
Winford - Dundry (Dundry Lane)

Category 4
Brockley Combe
Winscombe to Trotts Corner
A38 Cowslip Green to Bristol Airport
Bleadon Hill from Bleadon Bridge
Burrington Combe
Wrington - Long Lane, Redhill - Bristol Airport


No Category awarded
A38 Shute Shelve
Winscombe Hill
Interesting - nothing I've chosen to include on the actual list is less than category 4.

It would appear that the TdF categories bring far more into category 3. I would suggest that this is a function of the distances and exertion involved in completing the TdF and so, on the whole, I think Phil price's system is probably better for grading our Mendip hills.
Comments gladly accepted - please let me know what you think.

DP

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Cheston Combe from Backwell Cross

Start: GR 487686     Finish: GR503665
Height Gain: 167m    Horizontal Distance: 3.4km

So there I was, up Wrington Hill and still feeling fresh. I had intended just a short run back via Congresbury but now that didn't seem right. Well; I'd had a quick glance at Cheston Combe on the map this morning, didn't look to bad, go and do that...


Starting out from Backwell, dodging the parked cars, the bus and the recycling lorry, this seemed like the easy pull I thought I'd seen on the map. At the 'Y' junction I couldn't remember which way to go but chose left as it looked like the major road.  A passing pedestrian assured me that yes, this was the way up to the airport, I just had to turn right at the church. "Bit steep", she said - but I only worked that out later, I was too busy enjoying my sudden emergence from new Backwell into this gorgeous old-world village on a hill.
So, right at the church, steepish but OK, right at the bend onto a slight downhill that meets the other road I could have taken at the Y junction and then hard left. By the standards of what I've done so far, the road just rears round that corner. Battling for every pedal turn I came to realise that not all hills are meant to be climbed on a bike with a 39 tooth small chain drive. Breathing like a man back from 5 minutes under water I pushed on - but then the road steepened just a bit more and I had to accept that I needed a break. But I was not going to push the bike.


BikeRouteToaster shows the relevant section as about 1:5.5 but a detailed analysis of the OS1:25000 map shows that this 50m section of road climbs 15m, that's 1:3.3! I don't know, I'm just not used to anything that steep. I do know that it was hard to push off and get going again and that I couldn't relax sufficiently to get my left foot clipped for about another 2 or 300m.
What remains is neatly summarised by the cross section, banks and a couple of flats. The last pull let me know it was there, but I suspect that was simply because of the 3km before it. What remained for me was a problem. It wasn't that I couldn't do the hill in one go, it was that I couldn't do the hill in one go on that bike. Time for a change! Everything I've described on the blog so far has been done on the Barracuda RS100  that I bought last year. I didn't expect to use it for much more than back and forwards to work, but this bike riding game is addictive. This afternoon I took advantage of the 'Cycle to Work' and set up the order which will in due course, put me in possession of a Scott Speedster S40 Triple. No excuses when that arrives!

Rating: Outstanding. Pretty (once you're out of the new bit of Backwell), steep, hard, long enough to call a climb and an excellent road surface for the standard of road. Go do it. If you can do it in one go on a 39 tooth chain drive I don't want to know!

The Return: October 7th 2012. Re-doing this, all in one go, became the final challenge of the 25. This morning I went back, repeating the run in over Wrington to finish the job. I'd got the beginnings of a cold so Wrington was tougher than normal - didn't bode well for Cheston Combe. But it went. That middle section is still tough going but what a difference a bike makes! Using that 30 tooth chain ring on the Scott Speedster changed impossibility into straightforwardly tough. I think I even managed to keep the top cog on the back 'spare'. I stand by the rating, this is one of the best climbs in the area.

DP

Wrington Hill

Start: GR 473626       Finish: GR 475640
Height Gain: 133m     Horizontal Distance: 2.1km


I have to grant that I've been looking forward to this climb with some trepidation. Having first met it after doing Cleeve Hill Road, and having been terrified for my son at the pace he came down it, I saw this as a serious challenge. It may be short, but it does do steep.


The first section along School Road up to the cross roads is easy enough, the left turn you need to make at them provides a very short flat and then turn right into the meat of Wrington Hill itself. Analysis of BikeRoteToaster shows that this first section is 1:6.5, believable as it's steep but well in the do-able range (and this on a 39 tooth chain drive - see later blog) but there's only 225m of it so you just push on through. There follows an easier section, still about 1:9 but easy compared with that bottom section, before the hard left bend at the top. I found I had to go onto the wrong side of the road here, the gradient on the inside of the bend is just too steep, but the outside is OK and you can see that there are no cars coming down! There follows a gradual rise for a bit more than a further km but you've done the hard bit - a 100m climb in 1km. Wrington Hill is conquered - 3 months to be concerned by it and under 10 minutes to get up.

Rating: Too short to be rated very good - but hard enough to give a feeling of victory when you vanquish it. The drop down Cleeve Hill Road needs treating with care as the road is rough and a bit loose.

DP

Sunday 1 April 2012

Old Bristol Road, Wells

Start: GR553487     Climb: 201m     Horizontal Distance: 3.5km

Oh yez! Oh yez! This is a climb to write home about. The average climb gradient of 1 in 17 doesn't sound too bad, but bear in mind that there is a 1/2 km break in the middle of this so it's actually 1 in 15, and that's where the hard work kicks in!

Starting out from Wells you follow the A39 until a road name sign on the left indicates that it's time to turn left. You've already been going uphill, though not savagely, the left turn steepens the gradient and makes the right turn that follows almost immediately a harder task. The road is narrow, but well surfaced with surroundings of trees and then fields - not that you get to notice this much!
I'd had my eye on this hill for a while having met it when visiting a rather excellent garden at a house towards the base a couple of years ago. I remembered having to use the gears on the car quite a bit for getting up it - I remembered well!
So what's involved..?
As you can see from the cross-section, the first km has a steady pull, doable but work. Then comes a significant steepening but this hard section doesn't last - there's a slight downhill for a brief rest. Then the real work starts. The next 2km offers no respite as the road climbs steadily and sufficiently steeply to hurt. The cross section appears to show a constant gradient but a closer look at the OS map reveals the reality; there is an increase in gradient for the last 450m. There's a hard short section at the end of the long straight, you see it from well off and it looks serious. What you see is what you get though, the gradient isn't maintained as the road takes the slight left bend so you can relax for a 100m or so. And then the real test. You see it as one long straight, you've done the bends that keep you guessing - now it's there before you, the climb to the summit. It's 60m up in 400m horizontal. Head down, keep pushing, keep going.
You may gather I found this one tough. Most of it is steady grind, but a the harder end. It's that constant flow of effort that gives getting up Old Bristol Road such a feeling of achievement - the hard bits have all come after fairly hard bits, there is no steady 1 in 20 on here.
Rating: Come and do it - it's better than Cheddar. Different to the parallel road on the A39 Bristol Road. In a sense it takes on the same challenge - but this is steeper and more intense.

Better? I'd say so, a sharper pull and far less traffic - but Bristol Hill is a good route too.
DP